X-Men Game
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@lotherio
Entirely different system, dude. MHRP uses a version of Cortex (specifically, Cortex Heroic) from Margaret Weiss Productions.I can get behind an X-only place. And that needs to be enforced. And make sure that some of the stuff that went on with the X-men re: Superhuman Registration/Civil War is referenced (IE: Cyclops went 'Motherfucker, what?' to Tony).
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And another question I have:
Would you make your limiter "Mutants Only" or "X-men Sphere Only"?
Open things to non-mutants that have been members of the X-men (like Deadpool, Hepzibah, etc) and restrict non-X-men related mutants like Justice and Squirrel Girl? -
@scourge said in X-Men Game:
And another question I have:
Would you make your limiter "Mutants Only" or "X-men Sphere Only"?
Open things to non-mutants that have been members of the X-men (like Deadpool, Hepzibah, etc) and restrict non-X-men related mutants like Justice and Squirrel Girl?None of those are allowed. Ew.
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@scourge My thought would be if the FC wasn't already connected to the X-Men-related stories in some way (X-Men and all its other titles including New Mutants, Excalibur, Generation-X and so on), then it's a no.
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@scourge
If the setting is based in Utopia, the edict from Cyclops and Emma was 'ALL mutants are welcome,' which is why you had people like Fever Pitch and Toad there. So I'd wager if there's a reason for them to come to Utopia (like, say, staff runs a plot where the new anti-mutant reproduction ban is in full swing), I'd say let them. I also hope that non-mutant X-men-related FCs are available (not at ALL because I want to app for Danger, no siree!) -
@ghost I believe I can, yes. I'll work on that tonight and invite some people over to my test DB tomorrow or Tuesday to see how it goes.
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Yeah I don't know why you'd restrict non-Mutants even on an X-focused or even X-only game, there are plenty of not-a-Mutant chars under the umbrella
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These last few posts reinforces the concern of FC and OC, already a variety of what should/shouldn't be good for X-Men based Utopia. I don't care which what is allowed, just be consistent when the decision is made and defend don't let the gates open more and more as was said on this thread.
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I can get an SF grid yes but it would need to be redesced because it's originally built for a WoD vampire game and the owner who wrote all the descs considers them proprietary to her. Fair warning. It is perhaps not ideal but it is something.
Also, I would prefer working out something other than the usual 'write a gigantic app' -- again, intent prioritized over knowledge is what I want out of a superhero game. A lot of X-Men villains, even some of the big bads... are entirely playable in a demi or non-antagonistic compact with the X-Men (Sabretooth IS an X-Man RIGHT NOW, or at least allied with them, as is Mystique at least until her next Sudden yet Inevitable Betrayal) but doodz like Sinister (and I loves me some "Sinister Wilde", best version of the character ever) or Apocalypse, no. And you can even play a freakin' non-evil Apocalypse if you go with recent canon... I kinda like Genesis/Evan. He's a good kid.
“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn -
Setting: Anything, ANYTHING but Westchester/School. Anything at all. I don't care if it's Utopia; I don't care if it's Genosha; I don't care if they're living on Asteroid X and fending off Skrulls all day; the private school in upstate New York is just so, so played out as a setting for X-Sphere MU* play. I'm not even totally against the idea of /a/ school, of there being a component of education and/or training to whatever setting is used, but on the occasions that I've played in the traditional setting, I've found it to be stifling and dragged down somewhat by an overemphasis on the minutiae of school life.
Maybe that's just me, though, I dunno; it's certainly popular enough.
Personally, I would be into using Utopia, or even brainstorming some mystery alternative, if that really doesn't suit.
Canon: I'm super ambivalent about the idea of a canon-cutoff game. It's a useful shortcut towards sidestepping some of the common problem of superhero MU* settings these days by providing the game with an already-fleshed out setting, providing players with a good sense of what important events have or haven't already occurred, and preloading some easy character connections for FCs. I do, however, think that it would be entirely possible - especially in a game with a more limited focus - to construct a suitable setting/overall game framework that both lets people enjoy some of the freedom of adaptation that tends to come with playing on comic games and still maintains a sense of internal consistency if the staff was willing to take care in coming up with a solid foundation and work with the playerbase to ensure that its overall integrity is maintained.
It's not hugely important - to me, at least - whether the precise events of the Phoenix Saga, or Inferno, or X-Cutioner's Song have occurred, or whether the first X-Men were Archangel, Maggott, Cecilia Reyes, Colossus, and Storm; what matters more to me is that whatever setting is run with is consistent and coherent on its own terms.
Scope: The X-Men have quite a few unique(or, at least, recurrent) setting elements, enough that - in combination with what the wider Marvel Universe provides - there's plenty of diverse territory to cover. I personally have found myself drifting towards a preference for combined themes, so that's of course where I would fall, given a choice-- but, given the aforementioned diversity, and the commonality of broadly combined theme games, I think my actual feelings run towards trying to find some middle ground between that preference and a more limited scope by taking some inspiration from M1963+, as well as M3, and any number of other fandom-based games with mixed themes:
Open with 'mutants and associated allies/adversaries only', or even 'X-Men/Brotherhood/whatever else feels appropriate' as the scope, and gradually - via plot, at a deliberately measured pace - expand that scope over time, allowing new FC options to trickle into the pool in a way that - at least, theoretically - allows for some of the variety that seems popular in the circuit these days without running as great of a risk of theme-dilution. Maybe after shutting down a moon-based Master Mold, the X-Men discover the Blue Area, opening the door to tentative negotiations - and/or conflict - with the reclusive nobility hidden within it; maybe Fisk Industries opens a San Francisco subsidiary, drawing a number of costumed mercenaries to the area as the Kingpin sets about trying to tame the underworld of a city actively protected by mutants; maybe ~teenagers from the future begin appearing around town with dire warnings of Kang and/or his adoptive children, whose brutal, timeline-spanning regime began with exploiting San Fran's dormant Celestial. The important thing, ultimately, would be taking care to mold anything from outside of the X-verse to fit the setting, rather than the opposite-- which goes back to the importance of a well-defined and carefully maintained theme.
Alts: The number of possible FCs for an X-Men only game still runs well into the triple digits. They aren't /all/ A-listers, but there's still a healthy enough variety that I'm not convinced of the importance of restricting everyone to a single FC-- though defining a set of 'important' characters that no one person should be playing more than one of would certainly be useful. If it's a matter of forcing focus by limiting the number of alts on a game, well-- people are going to be as focused or unfocused as they're naturally gonna be, no matter what rules this one game has in place to encourage or curb them. There are other MU*s; there's World of Warcraft; there's Netflix; there are a million things that could reduce the amount of overall attention paid to this one game which its admin would have no control over.
That said, of course: I don't think that there needs to be a crazy number of 'em allowed, either. 2, maybe 3 FCs; a laxer number of OCs, though likely not 'unlimited'. I don't have any strong feelings, there. If there were some gradual process of adding to the available character roster, then it could be that - a ways down the line - allowing for more FC slots could be warranted, but absent that, I'm not so sure.
I probably have more thoughts on this specific subject - I definitely have more on the broader subject of concocting a cape game, though I can't really vouch for their coherency ATM - but they aren't coming to me, right now.
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In the Utopia era different X-Teams had different jobs.
New Mutants: Take this list of loose ends and missing persons and tie them up/find them and either give us a status update or bring them here.
X-Force: This can not be allowed to exist. Get rid of it.
Etc.No alts on the same team seems fair.
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@phase-face said in X-Men Game:
I'm not even totally against the idea of /a/ school, of there being a component of education and/or training to whatever setting is used, but on the occasions that I've played in the traditional setting, I've found it to be stifling and dragged down somewhat by an overemphasis on the minutiae of school life.
Having played in games - albeit not comic book ones - where 'education' was a part of roleplay I found this to be true, but part of it was just that it gave people an instant answer to the eternal question - what do we roleplay about? So if you had nothing else going on, Cyclops could always meet up with Bob the Melter to give them a lecture about leadership or... something.
On its own that's not a bad thing. It could even be a great thing.
The problem (for me, YMMV) is that it sometimes turns into a reason to prevent people from joining other types of RP, which is of course the exact opposite of the scenario above. "Evil robots are attacking! Let's go! Uh, just not you Bob, go to your room and study."
I feel if the game is clear enough that the latter is utterly stupid (in fact X-Men have been placing teenagers into danger since ever) then I don't see this as an issue.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@the-tree-of-woe said in X-Men Game:
In the Utopia era different X-Teams had different jobs.
New Mutants: Take this list of loose ends and missing persons and tie them up/find them and either give us a status update or bring them here.
X-Force: This can not be allowed to exist. Get rid of it.
Etc.No alts on the same team seems fair.
X-Force gets disbanded at the end of Second Coming and Wolverine re-forms it but that series is super super super dumb so yeah if there's gonna be an X-Force just let somebody start it again IC
Also yeah there were a couple of different teams who had books and it was implied many more "groups" existed
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@arkandel said in X-Men Game:
So if you had nothing else going on, Cyclops could always meet up with Bob the Melter to give them a lecture about leadership or... something.
On an almost completely unrelated topic, I thought the new Melter was a great character.
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Ummm. What is the problem with X-Force, you haters?
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@the-tree-of-woe A place I've seen made it as simple as letting people take history from a site like Comic Vine and go "Everything here happened," or "This all happened except for..." An alternative would be to write a simple background if the player wants to stray from actual canon history.
That could be a little problematic for a Year One sort of place, especially if you start having characters in certain groups who have a mixture of some keeping history and others going off in another direction, however. It'd be confusing to have Cyclops acting like the original X-Men existed while Jean Grey tries to go with a different thing, so staff would have to decide how to handle that.
Aside from this, I don't think a Utopia sort of setting would fit a Year One setup well at all, unless staff comes up with an alternate timeline of events that essentially establishes this as the way things are without all the comic history taking place exactly as it's played out.
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A thought I had was basically 'Secret Empire' (Ugh) ends so badly that nobody's sure that the United States is going to exist as a coherent entity past that point, so the X-Men go back to Utopia and create 'Nation X' but honestly Secret Empire is such a trashfire even I only sorta like that idea.
“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn -
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@tempest
And she's a mutant, so she don't need to be no assassin-murderer to fit.
Honestly, if you wanted to use teams for stuff? Here's some thoughts...
- X-men Core: The main Gold/Blue action teams
- X-Club: Scientists and researchers
- X-Force: Utopia police/security
- Jean Grey Academy: The school
- Young X-Men: The official team of students being trained to expand/join the X-Men teams. Use some of the Academy X-stylings and arrange them into squads?
- X-Corp: Business and investments, particularly set up as human/mutant or SanFran/Utopia relations.
